


Rip Her to Shreds

by fluorescentgrey



Series: Moonage Daydream [3]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Glam Rock, M/M, velvet goldmine au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey
Summary: "I don't hate Francis Crozier as much as I pity him." Hickey recalls a pivotal conversation.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Commander James Fitzjames/Cornelius Hickey
Series: Moonage Daydream [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773430
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Rip Her to Shreds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trill_gutterbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/gifts).



Years later, they spoke to that vicious interrogator from Melody Maker who asked Hickey about his and the rest of the Mutineers’ unceremonious departure from Discovery Records. “What do you say to the rumors that you had a knock-down-drag-out row with Francis Crozier,” she asked, angling her tape recorder in Hickey’s direction with a polished flick of the wrist. 

She had taken them to these quite posh tea rooms just to cause a scene. She was that kind of girl, and for that, Hickey liked her, though later on down the line, not that he could have known this then, Des Voeux would marry her, and they would have a kid before divorcing. Against all the pale lace and finely constructed patisserie and silver tea services polished bright enough to distortedly reflect their wan faces the band looked like escapees from Hades accompanied by the girl on the _Roxy Music_ album cover. 

“I don’t hate Francis Crozier as much as I pity him,” Hickey said measuredly into the tape recorder, “and to be frank I don’t pity him as much as I venerate him.” 

“You do?” 

“Got us off the street, he did,” Billy said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He had showed up late, direct from home, staggering in the door so that it was clear he had had himself a mighty dose of skag en route. When he was like this he’d manage two puffs off the cigarette before he nodded off and forgot about it and it burnt out between his fingers. Earlier in this very interview, he’d been dead to the world, drooling on Tozer’s shoulder. 

“I do reserve a tender feeling for that man,” Hickey agreed. “Despite everything. We certainly had our differences.” 

The journalist picked up her cigarette from the ashtray on the table. Hickey could tell she thought she’d met her intellectual match. “By all means,” she said, “keep answering around my question.” 

“Well, the answer to said question depends on what you mean by knock-down-drag-out,” Hickey said. 

The journalist set her cigarette against her red lips. “Is there any other meaning?” she said. 

\--

Nowadays, he certainly thought about it as veneration, even love. At the time, everything had been a great tangle of indistinct feeling. He understood, regretfully, that he was greatly jealous of James Fitzjames, though such a thing should’ve been beneath him. This jealousy did not solely encompass the fact that Fitzjames was getting his guts plumbed regularly by Crozier’s no-doubt inspiring cock, but certainly a great deal of it rested there. Hickey knew who he was; he wanted to be seen. It came from being a long time unseen. The desire was not without disgust — he also knew that he was being used. 

On the fateful night of said row, he took a cab from the venue across town and found Crozier alone at the Discovery offices near Hyde Park. When it was dark that place felt like a tomb. Like a sunken ship. His ears were ringing so loudly he could almost taste the bell. The whole building was dark except for the buttery light spilling out of the dark room off the lobby where the man himself held court. He had propped his temple in his hand such that at first Hickey thought he might have been asleep, but then, with great concentration and focus, he licked a finger and turned one of the great ledger pages. 

Hickey went in and sat down in the chair before Crozier’s desk where nearly a year previous he had sat with Billy begging for a job. After a few moments it must have winnowed its way through Crozier’s lawyerly skull that he was going to have to deal with whatever had seated itself in front of him, and he looked up slowly, peering down his nose through the unstylish wire-framed glasses. Hickey allowed himself to be evaluated. He watched Crozier come to the appropriate conclusion of the drama as it had heretofore been written. 

Whatever books he was looking through closed with a percussive thump, fluttering the scattered papers on the great desk. “Was quite a show tonight, Mr. Hickey,” he said thoughtfully. 

“Yes, sir.” 

Crozier took the glasses off and set about polishing them with a stained cloth drawn from the pocket of his waistcoat. “Forgive me,” he said, in a tone suggesting he did not in fact wish to be forgiven, “but what are you doing here?” 

“I should think it would be obvious.” 

“If you’re trying to rub my face in your mess like a puppy,” Crozier said, putting the glasses back on so that he might look through them with renewed contempt, “you should know that it does not work that way.” 

“How’s that?” 

“You know precious little about me, Mr. Hickey — ”

“— I know enough.” 

Crozier ignored this interruption in favor of reaching for the low drawer in his desk which contained the scotch. This retrieved, he emptied the bottle into the fingerprinted tumbler weighing down a handful of old bills. “Do you ever think that — your behavior may tell me more about you than it tells you about me?” 

So help him Hickey felt a great losing tug. The question he was thinking escaped before he could stop it: “What do you think you know about me?” 

“You had a terrible childhood. Nobody loved you. It must have been very hard.” 

Hickey blinked. His eyes shifted away from Crozier and settled on the army medal in its broken case on the floor. 

“You do have my sympathy for that,” Crozier said. “Scotch?” 

“I don’t drink.” 

“It was the same for me,” Crozier continued. “I think one in such a position, who survives, of course, might be fated to wind up like one of the two of us.” 

Hickey waited. Crozier sipped the scotch. It finally became clear this could go on all night. “How so, sir,” Hickey asked. 

“Drunk and square,” Crozier said, indicating himself. “Or like you. Honestly, there’s no way of knowing, but I do think I might prefer it, to be a conniving little tart like yourself.” 

“A what!” 

Truly his greatest strength in conversation was that he was capable of bulldozing through all interruption. “I regret that we share anything at all,” he said, studying the pattern of the liquid against the glass, “especially this. It's a great bloody wound that cannot be healed. It can only be soothed. You might accept that.” 

“I did not come here to be psychoanalyzed by you,” Hickey said, standing, bracing himself against Crozier's desk. He had tightened his hands into fists because he was concerned they might possibly have been shaking. 

There was a strangeness circling in the old man’s eyes. “You came here to tell me something I already know,” Crozier said. “I expected better from you.” 

“You know whose mouth my cock was in not forty minutes ago?” 

Crozier moved faster than Hickey had thought him capable and struck him in the face with a closed fist. It broke Hickey’s nose and shredded his upper lip against his teeth such that it hurt to speak for about a week. The force of it drove him stumbling backward but he did not fall. The pain was an instantaneous blunt knife and then it subsumed beneath the wave of shock and adrenaline. He could feel blood running off his face and landing with a raindrop sound on the shag carpet. 

“I know you’re out of a job, Mr. Hickey,” Crozier said, wiping the blood from his knuckles with the cloth he had used to clean his glasses. Then he sat back down at the desk and opened the ledger again. 

It didn't feel like freedom, though it was. It rather felt like the opposite. Perhaps it was for that very reason that on his way out, blood thick in his mouth, heart slamming so that he could feel it in the fabric of his thin t-shirt, Hickey went by the costume closet and took a pair of Fitzjames’s snakeskin boots.

\---

\--

-

**Author's Note:**

> this ongoing glam rock AU is a joint production of myself and chloe aka [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve). named after [the tune by blondie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHsH_XLn-Zk) ... 
> 
> i wanted to share that i got [called out when i posted this piece on tumblr](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/622855654892322816/rip-her-to-shreds-fluorescentgrey-the-terror) (please do not harass this person). i think they make a fair point. i know that we love the narrative of the show because it's about the folly of colonialism... but it's important to remember that these guys were more successful colonizers elsewhere in the world. i would appreciate if you would take a moment to reflect on who we choose to valorize and sanitize in historical (fan)fiction. i am always here to discuss this in more detail. 
> 
> this piece was written for trill_gutterbug in grateful acknowledgement of their donations to organizations on the front line of the racial justice movement right now. i'm doing an [ongoing fundraising drive](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/620033047264378880/ok-everybody-i-hope-youve-seen-my-post-from-last) to support racial justice organizations and protestors - if you'd like to take part, and i hope you will, please give and message me with proof (on tumblr or at fgreyfx @ gmail) and i will write you something.


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